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Chapter 12Forecasting in Troubled Times

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V

Although interest rates may be the most difficult variable to forecast, the most challenging environments for prognostication involve unanticipated crises—terrorism threats, natural disasters, sudden oil price swings, stock market crashes, and foreign economic turmoil. These events have prompted some major mistakes by all forecasters—including myself. When they occur, the public is taken by surprise, the media often overreacts, and our clients demand fast answers. The world, in other words, is thrown into a bit of a tizzy. (Figure 12.1 illustrates how crises of the past few decades have affected consumer confidence.) Although no one knows when these crises will occur, everyone knows that occur they will. To cite three obvious examples: